


Lift Me Up With Gentle Hands

by Lassroyale



Category: Chuck (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Aftermath of Violence, Angst, Blood, Comfort/Angst, Discovery, Emotional, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotions, Hurt, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Relationships, Love, M/M, Pre-Slash, Tenderness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-25
Updated: 2013-11-25
Packaged: 2017-10-20 13:49:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/213432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lassroyale/pseuds/Lassroyale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Casey’s hands are made for  brutality and for killing.  His hands bring death.  And yet Casey has a moment and a revelation as Chuck's blood stains his palms.</p><p> </p>
            </blockquote>





	Lift Me Up With Gentle Hands

**Author's Note:**

> This was my first ever Chuck fic, lol. So, I hope you enjoy and please review if you wish! :D

John Casey’s hands are large. His hands are strong, calloused and tough from a lifetime of use. His knuckles are perpetually swollen; the tips of his fingers smell like gunpowder. Casey’s hands are made for brutality – for killing.

His hands bring death.

Death is written into the whorls of his skin, imprinted, as complex as computer code – automatic. His body reads the cipher with ease, years of training twitching muscle memory into lethal action without thought. His fingers know just how much pressure to apply to a man’s windpipe to crush it. His palms welcome the feeling of cool steel pressed against his lifeline. His arms anticipate the recoil of a .45 caliber Sig Sauer as it’s fired. His ears are accustomed to report of gunfire, a type of discordant song that’s more beautiful than any symphony of Beethoven’s. It’s an honest song – real – and each time he hears the sound of a gun discharging a note is struck within him.

There’s a sense of finality in the chords of gunfire, an echo that fades into the corners of the mind. He can identify with it. It soothes him.

What John Casey’s hands _don't_ know, however, are how to heal. They don't know how to fix things – rather, how to fix people. That sort of thing was best left to doctors and field medics who had the patience for setting broken bones and sewing skin in a patchwork of stitches and gauze. Casey doesn't know how to comfort – he doesn't know how to hold the torn edges of Chuck's body together.

He tries however, and for the first time Casey’s hands feel useless. They tremble once, betraying him – betraying the depth of his worry. He feels the warmth of Chuck’s blood drain over his fingers and fill the lines of his skin. It stains his wrists. Casey’s hands tremble once more before he grits his teeth and forces rigid control back through his limbs.

Chuck doesn’t notice. He barely knows anyone is there.

John Casey’s hands are stained red. Chuck's skin is red, slick, and raw, and Casey’s green Buy More shirt is saturated with the crimson stain of Chuck's fading life. Casey holds him closer, curling him to his chest automatically - protectively - when Chuck suddenly gasps and shudders. Blind panic violently jerks his body like a marionette with tangled strings, and Casey doesn't know what to do - not really.

He acts on instinct, and Casey finds himself muttering to Chuck in a deep, soothing voice that he doesn't quite recognize as his own. It’s too low, too _soft_ , though there’s a brittle tautness underlying his words which string the syllables together into identifiable speech.

Casey realizes he’s telling Chuck to hold on for him. He’s telling Chuck that he won’t leave him - would never leave him - no matter what. And, with a sobering jolt, he also realizes that it's true. 

Chuck begins to quiet, the tension leaving his body little by little, but when he slumps and becomes eerily still all at once, an overwhelming and sudden panic rises up within Casey. Chuck is _too_ still, his face _too_ slack, and Casey’s fingers are suddenly stupid with nerves as he hastens to smooth them across the bruised curve of Chuck's cheek. He trails the tips down Chuck’s jaw and presses them firmly against his neck, holding his breath for one long, agonizing second before finally feeling the faint thump of Chuck's pulse beneath his clammy skin. Casey's breath explodes out of him with relief. 

“Hang in there, Bartowski,” he mutters. The words are awkward on his tongue, thick and weighted with muted significance, almost as if they want to be something else. They do, they are; he _wants_. Casey starts to say something more, something meaningful perhaps, but he abandons the words halfway through. He swallows hard, swallows around their shape which is lodged heavily in his throat.

Chuck’s eyelids flutter, but don’t open. Casey feels something wind tightly in his stomach as he lets his fingers drift over Chuck’s numerous wounds for the umpteenth time. Fulcrum worked him over with the sort of exquisite care that Casey can’t appreciate at that moment. Not when Chuck is as limp as a ragdoll in his arms, bleeding all over his clothes and staining them with no consideration. Not when the lifeless body of the man who'd tortured Chuck is lying in a graceless heap with a bullet between his eyes.

Death was too good for that man. For once, Casey felt no satisfaction in killing scum like him. He wishes he could have taken his time with that bastard - especially after seeing what had been done to Chuck. Despite himself and despite his training, Casey squeezes his eyes shut against the memory which threatens to surface. It's no matter; even if he can shut out the image of seeing Chuck strung up and beaten black and blue and flayed red, he will never forget the sound of his blood dripping onto the cold concrete. _Drip. Drip. Drip._

The memory makes something surge red hot and violent within him, and Casey has half a mind to go over and curb stomp the corpse of that Fulcrum bastard. He shifts, his hands tightening into fists as the anger sears through his veins like a flash flood, when a slight pressure on his forearm wholly absorbs his attention. Casey immediately glances down and sees that Chuck is looking up at him. Chuck's face is beaten to hell, one eye blackened and swollen shut, and his bottom lip is split painfully – cut with a razor.

“You came,” Chuck gasps. His voice is weak, dry, and the words seem to free themselves from his throat with considerable effort.

Casey doesn't know what to say, so after a moment he replies, “I should’ve been here sooner.”

Chuck draws a laborious breath deep into his lungs and doesn't say anything for a long moment; long enough that Casey thinks he might have passed out again. “I asked for you,” Chuck murmurs after awhile, just a soft rasp of sound that Casey almost can’t make out. "I told 'em I'd unleash the Casey...told 'em they'd be sorry..."

“Shut up, Bartowski,” Casey growls, afraid that Chuck is wasting his strength on things that he doesn't think he wants to hear. Things that might _mean_ something to him. Things that _do_ mean something to him. Things he wants to hear, and yet knows he shouldn't.

Chuck opens his mouth again and Casey can read the protest in his one open eye. Casey stops him with a brush of his thumb along the sweep of his cheek, pausing briefly when he grazes the corner of Chuck's mouth. Chuck continues to stare up at him, the expression in his one good eye clouded with pain and inscrutable. Casey gently wipes away a the blood from the corner of Chuck's mouth; he frowns at the back of his hand, a deep 'v' creasing his brow when he continues to stroke his thumb soothingly along Chuck's jaw. “Not now, Intersect," he says, finally. "Save your strength. You’ll be useless to me if you die here.” Though his words are gruff, they're undercut by the affection he can't crush from his tone.

Chuck doesn't nod, doesn't say anything, but his drops his hand from Casey’s forearm to his wrist before tangling their fingers together. Casey doesn't pull away even though every logical part of his mind tells him to break the contact - the connection. Instead, he holds Chuck’s hand tightly within his own. He doesn't let go, even when Walker finds them moments later.

  
****

-VVV-

  
Later, there’s business to take of. Namely, there are people to kill - people who need to pay for kidnapping and torturing John Casey’s asset. There are not enough days in the year for what Casey wants to do to the people who tortured Chuck, but Fulcrum are like foxes gone to ground – no amount of barking down one of their holes will chase them out.

It’s early morning by the time he makes his way to the hospital. He doesn't bring anything with him except for the weariness he feels push down heavily on his shoulders, and a sort of dread that he’s unused to, settled firmly in the pit of his stomach. Walker's not there when he enters Chuck's room, and Casey's glad for the moment alone. It gives him time to gather his thoughts - his courage if he were being honest - and all too soon he finds himself standing at Chuck's bedside. He sinks tiredly down into the chair pulled up next to the bed and watches Chuck's eyes move behind his closed lids.

The room is a chorus of beeping monitors. Tubes seem to run in and out of Chuck's body with the kind of controlled chaos that only nurses can seem to make heads or tails of. Casey doesn't know what he's searching for in Chuck's ashen face. What he _does_ know, is that he wants tear the thick tube from Chuck's throat with unconstrained violence. Sure, he'd threatened to hurt the nerd before, but never seriously. _This_ was something different.

This was _Chuck_.

Casey's hands clench into fists, blunt nails digging crescent shapes into the thick skin of his palms. He shouldn't be here. He should be out investigating how to make the people who did this to Chuck _pay_. It's what a good agent would be doing. It's what _he_ should be doing.

But Casey doesn't move; he _can't_ move. He's rooted in his seat as a torrent of memories suddenly rushes over him. He remembers Chuck's teasing about how much Casey really loved him. He remembers Chuck's eagerness whenever he thought Casey was opening up to him; he recalls the sincerity in Chuck's voice, all at once disarming, charming, and utterly incredulous.

Casey abruptly pushes himself up. He couldn't be here. It was just too confusing. He turns to leave, intent on doing something simple - like tracking and killing members of Fulcrum - when there's a quiet noise behind him, like a quickly inhaled breath. He turns back towards the bed and feels something cross his face before he manages to close it off.

Chuck is awake, his one good eye trained blearily on him. He lifts a hand towards him and Casey tries not to notice how feeble the action seems. "Casey." Chuck breathes out his name so quietly that Casey might have imagined it, if he hadn't seen the slight movement of Chuck's lips. He's drawn back towards the bed - towards _Chuck_ \- his jaw hard and teeth clenched so tightly together he thinks they might just shatter. Chuck's fingers twitch up further and reach out for him, and Casey, after a moment's hesitation, folds Chuck's hand within his own.

He doesn't say anything and Chuck doesn't seem to expect it. Instead, Chuck closes his eye again and releases a relieved breath. "Stay," he whispers.

Casey knows Chuck can't see his nod, but he collapses carefully back into the chair, nevertheless. He stares at his hand curved gently around Chuck's, a hand that kills; a hand that's been stained with too much blood to ever truly be clean. Chuck cracks open his eye once more and looks at him, the corners of his mouth rounding into a pleased smile despite the breathing tube. Casey feels Chuck's fingers squeeze his own, and, after a moment's hesitation, he squeezes back, firmly and reassuringly. His breath catches in his throat as Chuck's smile widens a bit, before his eye shuts and he relaxes back into the pillows.

Casey isn't used to being gentle - there's no peace to be found within him. But Chuck seems to gain some measure of comfort from his presence and so he stays and he watches and he holds Chuck's hand in his own. And maybe that can be enough.

At least for now.

  
(The End.)

**Author's Note:**

> **  
>  [UPDATED as of: 11/23/13] **Edited and tweaked for flow and to flesh out a few areas. Please enjoy!**   
>  **


End file.
